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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War |  | Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Seller: CDC Books
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 15985
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 736
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.9
ISBN: 0786888628
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.904240973
EAN: 9780786888627
ASIN: 0786888628
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"In a grand gesture of reclamation and remembrance, Mr. Halberstam has brought the war back home."
--The New York Times David Halberstam's magisterial and thrilling The Best and the Brightest was the defining book about the Vietnam conflict. More than three decades later, Halberstam used his unrivaled research and formidable journalistic skills to shed light on another pivotal moment in our history: the Korean War. Halberstam considered The Coldest Winter his most accomplished work, the culmination of forty-five years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy. Halberstam gives us a masterful narrative of the political decisions and miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu River and that caught Douglas MacArthur and his soldiers by surprise. He provides astonishingly vivid and nuanced portraits of all the major figures-Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, and Mao, and Generals MacArthur, Almond, and Ridgway. At the same time, Halberstam provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. As ever, Halberstam was concerned with the extraordinary courage and resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden. The Coldest Winter is contemporary history in its most literary and luminescent form, providing crucial perspective on every war America has been involved in since. It is a book that Halberstam first decided to write more than thirty years ago and that took him nearly ten years to complete. It stands as a lasting testament to one of the greatest journalists and historians of our time, and to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Halberstam's Last Is One Of His Best March 6, 2010
John D. Cofield
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Coldest Winter is labelled a history of the Korean War, but as with any work by David Halberstam it contains much more than the story of the conflict of 1950-53 itself. This is primarily the story of the early Cold War years, when two superpowers, unsure of themselves and in constant fear of attack, uneasily jockeyed for position and influence in the world. I believe it will become one of the standard histories of that era.
When North Korea invaded South Korea in the summer of 1950 an avalanche of consequences quickly ensued. The United States and the United Nations quickly took action to block aggression by what they perceived to be a monolithic Marxist bloc. The Communist world, in reality, was riven between factions and only theoretically controlled by the Soviet Union and its dictator Joseph Stalin. The war began with a fast paced roar but then bogged down in an endless bloody stalemate.
Halberstam did some of his finest writing since The Best and the Brightest in The Coldest Winter. He was a master of the telling anecdote and the revealing character study. Men like Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman who have become icons of history have their weaknesses as well as their strengths clearly displayed. But the finest parts of The Coldest Winter deal with the stories of the ordinary soldiers which are told here, often for the first time.
First Rate Military and Political History October 17, 2009
Mcgivern Owen L (NY, NY USA)
"The Longest Winter" is the story of the first winter of the Korean War, 1950-1951. CW covers the original North Korean invasion, the counterattack by the United Nations forces ("the "Inchon Landing"), the Chinese entry to the conflict and the ultimate stabilization of the front lines under the leadership of General Matthew Ridgeway. This critical period was the core of the Korean War. Author Halberstam drives headlong into the full maelstrom of front line combat including heroism, military politics and some appalling failures of command. Halberstam correctly emphasizes the importance of leadership at the company and platoon levels. There are excellent background sketches of the ruling circle of the era: President Truman, Kim Il Sung, Dean Acheson, George Marshall, Joseph Stalin, Syngman Rhee, Mao Zedong, and Generals MacArthur, Almond and Ridgeway. Personalities plainly matter to this author. Ridgeway stands out as everyman's hero and MacArthur receives the full brunt of Halberstam's sharpest barbs. Looming darkly in the background of CW is the constant drone of domestic politics. Korea was an unpopular war and the Republicans cut President Truman no slack. What pressures HST was have faced; one can only admire the man's courage in the face of it all. There are some minor points of criticism: Maps are strong but not always conveniently placed and there are zero (!) photographs. Vietnam era readers may have no idea what many of these guys looked like. Perhaps future printings can correct these defects. Also, the author's attempts to square the circle by seeking parallels with the Vietnam conflict are downright awkward and definitely superfluous. Some might carp with CW's length but this reviewer was perfectly comfortable with the 669 pages. The bottom line is that "The Coldest Winter" is a serious, thoroughly researched book on a customarily passed over/disregarded time in this nation's military and political history.
Reads like a novel October 13, 2009
M. Memphis (Mason-Dixon Line, MD)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am a history buff and as such was looking to fill the void that is my lack of knowledge of the Korean War. I have read Halberstam before and am troubled that this would be his last.
The other reviews have given quite a detailed description of the scope of the book so let it suffice to say that I couldn't put it down. It has truly been since I first discovered Grisham that I could not put down a book, let alone a non-fiction. Well, I do need to amend that somewhat. At points in the book I was so overwhelmed with emotion as he recanted veteran's tales, that I had walk away for a day before shaking it off and then eagerly returned.
Yes, it did fill the void and I also learned more than I had ever hoped for on the larger picture of the early years of the cold war, the loss of China and the resultant politics back home. I certainly had to move Doug MacArthur down a shelf or two on my pantheon of historical figures, but I already knew that he should have retired a few years earlier.
I recommend it to anyone looking to understand the Cold War, the Truman/MacArthur episode, Communist China, military tactics and strategy, or the Washington Politics of the McCarthy era that have some eerie similarities to our own times. But most of all, it is simply a page turner and you can't wait to read what happens next.
America will miss Halberstam.
Fascinating History of the Korean War September 22, 2009
Charles W. Rice (Miami, FL USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter" is one of the most fascinating histories of war that I have read. It provides a detailed account of the political background leading up to the Korean War with Mao's army first fighting the Japanese and Chiang's Kuomintang forces, Stalin's involvement and refusal to commit Soviet troops, Kim Il Song's background and rashness, MacArthur's seeming imperial autonomy in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo, and the continuing deference and ambiguous orders issued to him by the Joint Chiefs and the White House. Much history about most of the men involved, like Dean Acheson, Averill Harriman, Harry S Truman, Dean Rusk, Henry Luce, and a host of others, is well-developed so that the reader has insights into their thinking.
The story is extremely readable and entertaining as Halberstam carries his readers through the political machinations, incompetence, and corruption of the Nationalist Chinese. Their influence in Washington on foreign policy is shocking to discover. Even as Chiang's troops constantly abandoned their American-supplied weapons and materiel in the field to the communists, the China Lobby urged congress to pass more and more appropriations bills that simply led to a better supplied enemy as the Nationalists retreated. The extreme right-wing Republicans supporting Chiang, who were known as the "China Firsters," denigrated the patriotism of those who did not fully agree with them and made Truman's life difficult as he tried to limit the scope of the war. In retrospect and in fairness, the actions of many in that group seem treasonous today, but have to be considered within an era in which the U.S. was finding its way as a newly-minted superpower in a turbulent and dangerous post-war world with its threat of a Soviet takeover of Europe.
Halberstam's chronicle of the frigid war in Korea is gripping as the weakness of the U.S. army and the incompetence of many of its senior commanders are exposed. Those who suffer the most through his pen are General Ned Almond; who is revealed to be rash, abrasive, short-sighted, and reckless with the lives of American troops; Charles Willoughby, who as MacArthur's top intelligence officer, refused to accept reports from the field of Red Chinese infiltration of the Korean peninsula and whose faulty analysis and twisted logic led to massive underestimation of the size and ability of Mao's army and heavily contributed to the needless deaths of U.S. servicemen; and, MacArthur himself, who bathed in glory after Inchon, but who was insubordinate, never spent a single night in Korea, and claimed to be able to respond to the Chinese through his intuition, since he "understood the oriental mind." USMC General O.P. Smith is shown as one of the few competent senior officers as he smells the Chinese ambush awaiting the Marines and deliberately delays execution of Almond's orders to rush north toward the Yalu. Smith's caution and efficiency saved countless U.S. lives and administered large scale casualties on the enemy. Halberstam draws parallels between the blind northern push by Almond and the massacre of Custer's men at Little Big Horn. As I read about the crossing of the 38th parallel by the Americans and the rapid push north, it reminded me of how the Russians retreated in the face of Napoleon's army, leading them deeper and deeper into a vast country until they were annihilated.
The centerpiece of this account of the war is, of course, the friction between MacArthur and President Truman and MacArthur's relief for insubordination and meddling in political affairs. Perhaps at no time since the Civil War has our founders' constitutional scheme been as threatened as it was by the general's outrageous disregard for civil oversight of the military and rogue statements of U.S. foreign policy.
Halberstam's Korean War history is a comprehensive masterpiece, which is easy to read, compelling, and difficult to put down. I highly recommend it to all readers interested in military and diplomatic history.
 A real disappointment August 3, 2009
J. Herschelman
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
There is a need for more books on the Korean War, but this one does not accomplish that goal. David Halberstam presents what seems to be personal vendettas and anecdotal evidence to support his own political views. I made it as far as page 179 and then got tired of hearing his diatribes. Will someone please write a decent account of the Korean War?
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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